Disappointed with Teac CD-540E CD-ROM drive

[Pauli]

After reading good things about this drive, I bought one (OEM) to replace my Toshiba 40x drive that was starting to die.

First, I installed the drive, flashed the firmware to 3.0A, and enabled DMA on the IDE channel in Win2K. This resulted in a complete machine lockup when trying to run CloneCD. I tried all different configurations of Primary and Secondary, Master and Slave and the problem kept happening. So, I had to settle for PIO mode (which seems to work fine)

Next, I tried CDSpeed99 and CDDAE99 . These benchmarks showed terrible results in the data transfer test (8x - 9x) and DAE (< 8x). I partially solved this problem when I downloaded the speed setting utility from Teac. For some reason, the default setting for this drive is 10x (figure that one out!) so I used the utility to set it to 17x-40x. This improved the transfer test to about 22x average and DAE to 17x average. This is still well below my expectations since the CDSpeed2000 site shows DAE at 30x. My Toshiba drive was faster at the transfer test but only had about 11x DAE average and did not have a problem with DMA enabled.

Did anyone else have this problem with DMA enabled for this drive?

 

[Biggs]

Get an Afreey.

 

[abaez]

Maybe you got a bad drive? I've had my 540E for a long long time and its fine.

 

[Commish]

Probably, you got a bad drive, I got a 540E about a month ago, no issues like that have popped up on me. Return it for another one.

 

[Flash]

I bought the Teac CD-540E for a friend and using WIN 98SE its running great also with DMA enabled on an Asus P3B-F. I let the drive run alone without any firmware update (I don´t know the current firmware version) or speed setting utility. I know with CD´s its a little slower than the fastest drives buth it´s running same transfer rates with CDR´s and CDRW´s which can´t any other drive.
What mainboard/Chipset are you running? Maybe its a driver issue or a problem with WIN2K. But maybe its a problem with Clone CD or any other software. I remember a very similar problem caused by software happened at a friends PC. He changed his CDROM for a NEC DVD-drive running UDMA. As soon as he installed a DVD-software the DMA modus was disabled and there was no way to enable it again. In the end he connected the NEC DVD drive to his Promise controller and everything went fine.

 

[Pauli]

Well, normally I would suspect that it's a bad drive, but I just checked the unofficial CloneCD message boards and 2 others have reported the same problem with this drive on different motherboards. Both were running Win2K.
The drive seems to work OK with DMA enabled except when running CloneCD. My MB is a Soyo BA6+III (BX Chipset). I guess I'll have to pop in a Win98 hard disk and see if it works.

 

[LXi]

Just got my CD-540E too, WinME, no problem with DMA enabled. Where can you get the new firmware and the utility?

 

[Floyd]

You don't happen to have the Teac on an expansion card like the Promise Ultra66, do you? I had mine on the Promise card, and although it reported as operating in UDMA mode 2 (ATA/33), DAE was well below what it should have been (in both Win98 &amp; Win2k). Simply moving it to the motherboard's ATA/33 connector fixed it. Strange.

And I had also experienced the CloneCD/Win2k lockup you mentioned. As I recall, Olli fixed it some time ago but perhaps it's resurfaced somehow. I can confirm that it was indeed fixed at one time, but I haven't used CloneCD lately.

Best regards,
Floyd

 

[Blain]

Are these Teac drives FAST on spin up?

 

[Pauli]

The version of CloneCD that I have is not the very latest, but it is only a few months old. I will go ahead and try the latest version. I have it connected to the regular ATA/33 connection - no other controller installed. It's beginning to look like this is a problem only with Win2K. I have seen no reports of this problem when people are running Win98 or WinME.

 

[Pauli]

With DMA enabled and detected I get the following scores with CDSpeed99 (Win2K Pro):
Data: 18x - 40x
DAE: Average 18.5x

So, everything seems to be OK with this drive with DMA enabled except that it won't run CloneCD. I even updated to the latest version and still have the same problem. Oh well, I guess I'll put this drive in my 2nd machine a buy a Toshiba XM-6702B 48x.

Thanks everyone for your input. BTW, LXi - I got the firmware from the Teac web site.

 

[LXi]

Makes the TEAC sounds inferior to the Toshiba, if thats the case I'd be dissappointed too.

 

[Pauli]

LXi-
Undoubtedly, the TEAC is a much better drive than Toshiba at DAE speed and probably equal as far as data transfer rates are concerned. The only thing that seems to be a problem is CloneCD on Win2K Pro. I'd be interested to know if anyone is using this drive, DMA enabled, running Win2K Pro and does NOT have a problem running CloneCD. If there is at least one person that I know can do it, I'd be inclined to think that the problem is with my software setup or the motherboard. Otherwise, I am assuming that CloneCD is incompatible with this configuration.

 

[Pauli]

Okay, tried the same hardware setup with WinME (I have a hard disk caddy) and everthing works great - even CloneCD. So, I guess there must be a problem with CloneCD when run on Win2K Pro with DMA on this drive.

 

[Dennis Travis]

I bought my Teac 540e maybe 2 months ago now. In ME or 98SE everything is fine with DMA enabled. I flashed to the latest firmware and also use the Teac Utility to set the DAE speed. You get the utility and new firmware from Teac's site by the way for LxI. I get DAE of 17.5 on the first track climbing to over 32x by just past the middle of a CD. I have found that if the CD is in really bad shape the DAE is a little lower but I have seen no other CD Drive get DAE this fast execpt the Plextor SCSI's.

Now for the 2k problem. I noticed that the Teac seems more picky in 2k with certain things. I had to run the utility sometimes a couple of times to make it go to the high ripping speed and one of the games I play that uses the CD a lot sometimes can not find the CD in the teac in 2k but never has problems in ME or 98SE. I am not sure what is going on but the difference is there. It's got to be something in 2k. I have not tried to disable DMA but will and see if that makes a difference. I love the 540e though and for the $$$ you can not beat it. I just don't know what is causing that one little problem in 2k that sometimes shows up. My other CD ROM that the Teac replaced under 2k was slow when first starting a game but it never did it under 98 or ME either. Strange stuff. If I ever figure it out I will post it here.

 

[LXi]

I already got the firmware and the utility, the thing is really cool because you can adjust things that isnt available with other CD-ROMs. Its doing very well in WinME right now, I hope it does well in Win2K as well.

 

[Pauli]

LXi-
Good luck with Win2K. Somehow I think that you will have to disable DMA, based on the reports that I've been seeing here and at CdrInfo.com. Please report your findings.